


Night Time

by Hinn_Raven



Series: A Softer Gotham [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), Detective Comics (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Detective Comics 647-649, Dimension Shenanigans, First Meetings, Gen, Stephanie Brown is Spoiler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:35:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23194855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinn_Raven/pseuds/Hinn_Raven
Summary: Stephanie Brown saved Martha and Thomas Wayne thirty years ago, and then vanished from the face of the Earth.But then Bruce Wayne encounters a teenaged girl who strongly resembles the woman who saved his family and changed his world, and starts to investigate who it is that is now using the familiar moniker of "Spoiler."
Relationships: Stephanie Brown & Bruce Wayne
Series: A Softer Gotham [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1662229
Comments: 50
Kudos: 374





	Night Time

**Author's Note:**

> This follow up was requested by a lot of people, including jewishsuperfam, our-happygirl500-fan, rabbit-of-the-moon-1, and multiple anons! Hope you all enjoy what I ended up doing with this!
> 
> Warnings for canonical levels of drug abuse, physical abuse, and violence.

Bruce Wayne, better known as the Batman, looks at the skyscraper.

This mystery: bank robbers, cut up photographs in the mail, and now, words painted on the sign of a building.

The fourth building, to be accurate.

LET THE PUZZLEMENT FIT THE CRIME.

Something about this is niggling at the back of his mind, reminding him of… something. He’s not sure what, but he’s definitely being reminded of _something_.

“The paint was water based,” Jim Gordan says, crossing his arms. All of this latest crime spree has been stressful on Jim. “Vandalism wasn’t the motive.”

Jim is an old friend, and Bruce trusts him. The man raised Barbara with morals of steel, and he genuinely seems to want to help.

But there’s politics, there’s always politics, and they’re worse than ever with the Mayoral Election going on. It means that there’s pressure right now. Things are… stressful, on the man, and Bruce doesn’t like to see that.

“These have to be linked to the puzzle clues,” Bruce says, thinking out loud. “This last one refers to the jigsaw pieces; “let the puzzlement fit the crime.””

“Some of these are easy ones,” Tim says, looking at the photographs of the other “crime” scenes. “It’s closed when open and open when closed. A kind of jam that’s not on bread. Where lumberjacks go shopping.”

They’re on a timetable—the criminals, whoever they are, are going to be striking on Labor Day, he’s sure of that.

Whoever is sending these clues… it’s as if they _want_ to be caught. Bruce has seen things like this before, but this… this feels different somehow.

Poking at the usual suspects turns up a name—Arthur Brown.

Arthur Brown is one of the usual suspects in many ways. A petty criminal with a flair for leaving clues to lead to his own capture. A knock-off of the Riddler in many ways, but not completely harmless. He’s been recruited for Amanda Waller’s Suicide Squad before and has a flare for… creative solutions to problems. Despite the man’s lack of formal education, the man is a genius at chemistry, which he’s put to great use in the past.

The man was released from a stint in Blackgate six months ago—freed early for his service to the Suicide Squad and with the assistance from a clean bill of health from his psychiatrist, who swore that he was cured of his compulsion.

Perhaps he was, but for some reason, the man has been hiring people for some reason… and the people he’s hiring aren’t likely to be getting together for a home-improvement project.

He passes the tip off to the police, for Jim’s sake, but he and Tim watch from the rooftops.

“So, he fooled his therapist?” Tim asks, standing by his side.

“The man’s record with Waller probably assisted more than that note,” Bruce notes, crossing his arms as he and Robin watch the police enter the building. “And it seems as if prison has taught him a few tricks, in the process.”

“Batman!” Tim says, spinning around. Bruce follows his line of sight and spots a caped figure darting across the rooftop. “Over there! That might be one of Cluemaster’s gang!”

His son is clearly gearing up to chase, and Bruce nods at him. Tim is still new at this, but he’s skilled, if in a different way than Jason and Dick. Tim can use the experience of chasing a perp solo.

Tim takes off, following the hooded figure, while Bruce watches the scene unfold below him. Barbara is busy with the Birds tonight, so he hasn’t asked her to tune him in to the GCPD private bands, since it stresses her out when she’s running too many missions at once, and despite the political importance of this one, these robberies haven’t been deadly yet.

The explosion shows that this might be about to change.

Bruce quickly moves into action, helping the police evacuate the building.

In the end, they have a body that _appears_ to be Arthur Brown, and Tim has a bruise on the side of his face from the mysterious figure.

“She was—Bruce, she was dressed up like _Spoiler_ ,” Tim says.

Bruce stops.

He thinks about Spoiler a lot, has thought about her nearly every night since she fell from the sky.

Spoiler, a moniker for a girl named Stephanie Brown. Blonde hair and kind eyes, a purple hood over a mask with no features except white eyes. An offered hand, a precious hug, a laugh that sticks in his mind, a gunshot in an arm. A batarang, still in a glass case in the cave. A note framed on the wall.

Kindness and warnings, safety and hope.

Thirty years ago, now.

He’s looked for her time and time again, but there’s been no sign of her. There has been no vigilante named Spoiler, no woman named Stephanie Brown who fits the description.

He’s stopped looking, because, after a while, he’s almost begun to believe that she was a phantom, a ghost, who came to offer him help in those desperate, dangerous days, and then fade away.

There have been a few copycat Spoilers, over the years. She is Gotham’s first hero, even if she was only there for three weeks. None of them have lasted long—some of them were even on the scene before him, but in the end most of them have faded away, and there hasn’t even been one since Dick’s days as Robin. 

This is the first time he’s ever heard of someone playing as Spoiler on the _other_ side of the game, however.

“Is it a coincidence?” Tim asks, nursing his black eye. She’d hit him with a brick. She’d been a girl, around Tim’s age, with blonde hair. “We’re investigating a Brown, after all.”

“It’s not exactly a rare name,” Bruce says, but yes, that’s been nagging at him too. And the girl had blonde hair…

“But no one else knows about her real name, right?” Jason asks, looking up from where Leslie is working him through his physical therapy exercises for his prosthetic leg—the original leg was lost in an explosion caused by the Joker, forcing Jason to be benched until he could relearn to fight with the prosthetic. “I mean, she only told Bruce to calm him down.”

“She could have told someone else,” Dick says, frowning. “I mean, Bruce can’t have been the only person she saved.”

“I contacted most of the people she helped over the years,” Bruce says. “If she told any of them her name, none of them ever mentioned it.”

“They could have been protecting her,” Jason points out. “It’s not like you told the cops that she showed you her face or gave you her name.”

Bruce nods to acknowledge his point. 

“Found anything?” He asks Barbara.

“Okay, I’ve found one thing,” she says, frowning. “Arthur Brown has a wife.”

Bruce raises his eyebrows and reads over her shoulder.

Currently, he hasn’t been stirring up trouble, except that his wife has been making a string of visits to the Emergency Room since Brown got out of prison.

Crystal Brown has been admitted with everything from bruises, to a concussion, to a broken arm, all of which she’s attributed to her own clumsiness. But there’s no doubt in the admitting notes that the entire hospital staff is convinced that there’s something far more sinister going on here. Especially since it’s clear that this is not the first time that such a string of occurrences has happened, with a conspicuous period of absences filling the space while Brown was in prison. A cursory look at her bank account by Barbara shows that Crystal Brown has been spending unusually high amounts of her salary on opioids, which she was prescribed to numb the pain from her injuries.

The portrait it paints isn’t flattering for Brown—perhaps he’s cured of his compulsions, but it doesn’t seem to have made him a better man, or a better husband.

While he was in prison, Crystal clearly tried to take some steps to keep the man out of her life—she started going by her maiden name, Bellinger, and she apparently visited a divorce lawyer, before Brown’s unexpected release from prison.

“Bruce,” Barbara says. She’s a faster reader than him. “They have a daughter.”

“What’s her name?” Tim says, leaning forward to join them.

“Stephanie,” Barbara says, softly and carefully. A picture comes up on the computer, of a girl with long blonde hair and a wide, familiar smile. “Stephanie Brown.”

And just like that… the mission changes.

* * *

Stephanie Brown, aged fifteen, brand-new vigilante, totally just clocked the Boy Wonder over the head with a brick last night.

And to make things worse, Dad faked his death last night, so the cops are off his trail, which just means that her job is going to get that much harder.

She pulls her bike into the garage of the house.

Boxes are piled high everywhere she looks. Dad bought this house ages ago, using money from a big score for the down payment, and he always insists they live here when he’s out, even though it’s far away from Mom’s job and it means that Steph has to change schools in the middle of the school year _again_. When he’s in jail, they move back into the city and sublet the place so they can actually make the mortgage payments, but Dad _likes_ living in a house in the suburbs rather than admitting that even on Mom’s salary as a nurse—which he always jeopardizes when he puts her in the hospital—they can’t _afford_ it.

Mom’s _really_ bad right now, too. The nurses are striking for better wages, and between that and how bad Dad put her in the hospital after he realized she was going by her maiden name again… she’s taking too many painkillers again.

Steph hates seeing her like this, hates seeing her mom’s eyes glassy and distant, hates seeing the pattern of her father’s fingers on her mother’s arm, hates counting the days until she has to drive her mom to the ER because Dad lost his temper. Hates having to go to the pharmacy to get her mom’s prescription filled way too often, because the doctor who signs off on them doesn’t pay _attention_ , or at the very least, doesn’t care.

And it’s only get worse and worse until Dad screws up and goes back to jail, and then… and then it’ll still be bad for a while, but Mom will shape up again, and go clean, and maybe this time, Steph can convince her to actually get that divorce, and maybe even a restraining order, and they can sell this stupid house, and finally be _free_ of him.

But that’s the problem. Dad’s gotten _better_ , since going to prison. He’s smarter, more careful, spending more time in his lab in the basement, coming up with resins that only he can dissolve and greases that disable guns, and less time thinking of ways to leave behind clues.

Which means that the police and Batman have no idea that it’s _him_ behind these robberies.

So, it’s up to her to spoil his plans.

She pokes her head in to check on Mom, who’s passed out on the couch, on her side, the TV playing some cooking show in the background. Steph carefully drapes a blanket over her, hides the pill bottle and the car keys in the freezer, and then goes to her bedroom to fetch her costume.

She loves her mom, more than anyone in the entire world. She hates leaving her when she’s like this.

But she hates her dad too. Hates him _so much_ for making mom like this, for the way that he’s taken everything good in her life and slowly poisoned it.

When she was little, she’d spent _ages_ in her dad’s lab, listening to him explain how he’d use each solution, each chemical. She’d loved it—the smell of the Bunsen Burner, the feeling of the glass vials which she wasn’t supposed to touch, the way that he seemed happier in the lab than he did anywhere else.

Now, she’s banned from the lab, has been since she was twelve and smashed everything she could to take vengeance for something or another—she doesn’t remember what, honestly, whether it was for hitting her or putting Mom in the hospital or even just telling her she couldn’t spend the night at a friend’s house. It didn’t matter, really. She spent the next twenty-four hours locked in the closet, and Mom was in the hospital so she couldn’t even let Steph out, and by the time he judged her punished enough, there were new, heavy duty locks on the lab.

She can get past them _now_ , of course, and she’s pilfered lots of things from it—smoke bombs, the formula that dissolves his favorite resin, and enough of his anti-gun grease for her to load a water pistol with.

She loads up her belt, and then goes back to the garage to get her bike again, so this time she can head out to spoil Dad’s next big crime.

She enters the garage, her mask in hand, not wanting to put it on again until she has to—she loves the design and all, but it’s not exactly _breathable_. She’s working on it, but Dad doesn’t have very much non-orange fabric to pilfer.

Batman is in her garage, Robin and Nightwing flanking him.

“What the _fuck_?” She yelps.

She then does the only thing she can think of.

She throws down a smoke bomb and makes a break for it.

* * *

When she walks into the garage, Bruce nearly forgets how to breathe.

He’d wondered if this was a trap, or a fake, but it’s _her_. Younger, maybe, but it’s her, nonetheless. Golden hair just past her shoulders, bright blue eyes, a face that, to him, just reads as _kind_.

The exact same shade of purple. A familiar mask bunched in her hand.

A violent father. A mother who needs protecting.

Stephanie Brown.

The Spoiler.

Impossibly here, impossibly young, and in front of him, staring at him and Dick and Tim with nothing but fear and confusion.

“What the _fuck_?”

Even her voice is the same, if less assured of herself.

But whatever shock she’s in, she overcomes it quickly, and smoke fills the air.

She can’t vanish quiet as fast as the girl he knew—the girl she will become? —but she’s fast, nonetheless.

“Spoiler!” He calls. “We’re just here to talk!”

She stops, but probably only because Nightwing is blocking her exit.

“Why?” She demands.

“We know you’re the one who’s been trying to lead us to Cluemaster,” he says.

She blinks, and then shakes her head. “How did you know I was going by Spoiler? I haven’t—I haven’t told anyone that.”

Tim blinks. “You’re… wearing the outfit.”

“What outfit? I designed this!” She says, absolutely offended.

She designed it.

It’s another truth, dropped directly into his heart.

No one had come for her. She had slipped through the cracks, _again_ , even with all the money he and his parents had poured into the social services, even with all the effort he had thrown into his job as Batman, helping families, reaching out to victims both as Bruce Wayne and as Batman.

Despite everything he had done, Stephanie Brown had still been failed—by him, by the world.

He had let down the woman who had saved his entire world.

“Wait, so you’re—you know there was a Spoiler back in the eighties, right?”

“What? You mean it’s _taken_?” Stephanie looks dismayed.

“You’re wearing her color! You’ve even got the hood!” Tim insists.

“Robin,” Bruce says. His youngest son is a bit of a skeptic. He’s looking for an explanation, for a pattern through history, a copycat, someone who took inspiration with a side of coincidence. “Enough.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Spoiler,” Dick says, offering a smile. All of his sons had so desperately wanted to come to meet her, to meet Gotham’s first vigilante who’s legacy has hung over them their entire lives, but Jason’s still benched until Leslie and Thomas say otherwise, so he was forced to stay behind.

He’s maintaining very sullen comm silence, but Babs assures Bruce that he is still present in the cave.

“I—nice to meet you? I guess?” She pauses. “Sorry I hit you with a brick?”

“It’s okay,” Tim says, awkwardly rubbing his eye.

“Spoiler,” Bruce draws her attention back to himself. Being taller than her is… so strange. In his mind, she has always been a giant, with a graceful smile and a ferocious spirit.

But now, he’s an adult, and he sees her as she is. Barely older than Tim, forced to grow up too fast, not even as tall as the girl he’d known.

But the set of her jaw, the clarity in her eyes, and the stubborn set of her shoulders… they’re all exactly the same.

“We just want to know if you need help,” he says. “Your father is a dangerous man. We all know this. I just want you to know that you don’t have to do this alone.”

She stares at him, and then turns around to stare at Nightwing.

“Me?” She says. “You’re… you’re not going to tell me to stop, or to stay home, or that I’m too young, and I should just have called the police?”

“We know your father has contacts in the police department,” Bruce says. Well, he doesn’t, but Stephanie Brown had told him that, thirty years ago. “I don’t see why calling them would have helped your situation. And as for the rest…”

“I was twelve, when I started, and I’m pretty sure Robin there is still younger than you,” Dick says. “Be kind of dumb if we tried to sell you that line.”

Her shoulder relaxes, just a little.

“I—I guess I could use the help,” she admits. She looks back towards the door to the house. “Can we—can we talk about this somewhere else, though? My mom—”

“Of course,” Bruce has to struggle not to smile. “We’ve got a few hours before your father is due to strike. Do you want to see the Batcave?”

“ _Bruce_ ,” Babs sighs in his ear. “You literally just met her!”

It’s worth it, though, for the way that Stephanie’s eyes widen to the size of plates. “For _real_?”

He can’t help it.

He smiles.

“For real.”

She pauses, so obviously tempted, then she shakes her head. “He’s going to be moving really soon,” she says. “It’s—probably best that we hurry. Especially since I’ll have to show you guys where he’s going to be moving.”

“Later, then,” he promises, and the hope flares in her eyes.

“Later,” she repeats reverently, like a promise.

* * *

_Batman_. _Robin. Nightwing._

She’s working with _them_.

This might just be the coolest thing she’s _ever_ experienced.

And if she stops her dad, she’ll be sure to give herself a small chunk of time to freak out about it.

Nightwing ends up having to go deal with something else on the other side of Gotham, but that’s okay, doing this with three people is _so much_ better than doing it with two.

She tells them her dad’s plan. Batman tells her to be careful, tells her not to go after her father alone, and she _knows_ he has a point…

But… every bruise, every haunted expression on her mother’s face, every moment in the closet, every rattle of a pill bottle…

She wants him to _pay_.

And she wants to be the one to do it.

She forces herself to listen though, fighting the mooks with Robin, while Batman goes after her father. She’s bringing him down, and she knows, she _knows_ that Batman is the better fighter, and _stopping him_ is more important than her own personal vendetta.

She keeps repeating this to herself, even as her father’s escape vehicle arrives and starts pulling up the platform he’s on—it’s a _helicopter,_ how did he get a _helicopter,_ never mind one that’s orange _—_ and as she sees Batman try to latch himself onto the slowly rising platform.

“Look who’s hitching a ride!” One of her father’s men yells.

“The man’s a menace! _Kill him_!”

And Steph just…

Snaps.

She was fighting the minions on top of the glass dome of the building, while Robin fought the ones on the ground, and she smashes through the glass.

“No!”

“Another one?” She hears her father say, as she plummets through the air towards the platform.

“Spoiler!” Batman yells.

“He’s _mine_ , Batman!” She yells, throwing herself at her father, delivering a swift uppercut across his jaw, sending him stumbling.

He shakes it off faster than she expects. “Another young squire, Batman? Running a daycare center for misguided junior vigilantes?”

The mocking tone of his voice is oh so familiar that her vision goes red, and she lunges again, but this time—

His hand wraps around her throat, like she’s seen it wrapped around Mom’s so many times, and—

He’s got one of his chemical concoctions, one that won’t kill her, but it will disfigure her for life, she knows all about this one, she’s seen the results before—

“Another step closer and your young ward will _need_ to wear a mask… _permanently_ ,” her father boasts, his fingers clenching against her windpipe.

The blades of the helicopter whir all around her, the wind battering at her, and she can smell her father’s shitty cologne that he wears on his jobs, and she wants to cry, she wants to scream, because she shouldn’t _be here_ , above the ground, fighting her dad, she should be at home, with her family, doing normal things like watching TV together, and talking about how well she did on her English paper, and helping her dad on his projects and—

“The way I see it, you have a choice, Batman,” her father says, his voice full of that _I’m-so-clever_ sound that means nothing good. “You can jump me, and the teen sidekick here gets his face rearranged with sulfuric acid… or you can jump _off_ and nobly sacrifice your life for this one.”

She wants to tell Batman not to do it, that it will be worth it… if she was a real hero, she probably would.

But she doesn’t want to die, she doesn’t want her dad to kill her, and besides, she can barely breathe, let alone utter a single word.

“You don’t want to do this, Brown!” Batman calls, his voice barely audible over the roar of the ever-approaching helicopter.

“I suppose you’ll try to appeal to my deeply suppressed humanitarian instincts?” Her father laughs. 

Batman doesn’t say anything, but a moment later, Steph is pulled forward, and she feels her father stumble, and she sees Nightwing out of the corner of her eye, having wrapped a length of chain—the same chain that’s connecting the platform to the helicopter pulling them up around her father’s legs and pulled, destabilizing him.

He probably wants her to run away—it’s probably what she _should_ do.

But the adrenaline is raging, and _she nearly died_ , and she spins on her heel and slaps her father’s hand so hard that the vial goes tumbling out of his hand, onto the ground harmlessly.

She slams both of her fists against his abdomen, and he doubles over, breathing heavily.

Her hands find the length of chain that Nightwing had just used.

He nearly killed her, just like he’d nearly killed her mom time after time…

No more. Not this time. He was going to leave her life _forever_.

It’s shockingly easy, to wrap the length of chain around her father’s neck, to pull it tight. He chokes and gasps for air, his hands struggling to pull at the chain as he falls to his knees, which only gives her _better_ leverage, makes it all the harder for him to break her grip, and—

“Spoiler! Don’t!” Batman calls. He’s so close that he could stop her, that he could reach out and touch her, but he doesn’t, standing in front of her, his hands spread out to show that he’s not a threat.

“He… he destroyed my life! _Destroyed it!_ ”

“No,” Batman says, his voice soft, even though she’s killing her father, his eyes rolling up into the back of his head. “He hurt you. But if you kill him, it won’t be Arthur Brown who destroyed your life. It will be _you_.”

She…

She breathes.

She lets go of the chain.

She steps away from her father, rubbing his neck and gasping for air.

And she turns away from Batman.

* * *

When her father is taken away, Bruce puts a hand on Stephanie’s shoulder, and leads her to the Batmobile.

She’s quiet, crashing from the adrenaline.

“I’m sorry,” she mutters, finally.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he tells her.

“Nearly killed him,” her eyes are closed, her head resting against the window, her mask discarded on the floor.

“But you didn’t. And that’s what makes you different from him,” he says. He’s seen plenty of people go down this path before, and he doesn’t want to see Stephanie Brown go down it. “He wouldn’t be talked down, even though he had no reason to hurt you. You had every reason to want him hurt, to want him dead… and still, you listened. And because of you, he’s going to be away for a long, long time. And no one got hurt.” He breathes carefully. “Stephanie.” She looks up at him, and he wonders if the version of her that he had known for those three precious weeks had ever let herself be this vulnerable. “You saved my life back there. You did good.”

“… really?”

“Really.”

He opens the door.

She blinks. “Wait… this isn’t Manchester.”

“No. It’s not.”

There’s a long pause, as she opens the door, and stands, gawping, in the middle of the Batcave, her hands loose at her sides as she takes it all in. The glass cases, the giant penny, the T-Rex, the gigantic monitor.

“You—”

“You said you wanted to see it,” Bruce says, smiling.

“But—even after?”

“Even after. Because that moment doesn’t define you. You’re going to keep moving. You’re a hero, Stephanie, and I want you to know… that I know that.”

“Why do you think that?” She demands. “You—you’ve only just met me.”

“It’s true, I don’t know you that well,” he allows. “But I have some very compelling evidence that you’re exactly the kind of hero that I have always looked up to.”

“I’ve painted things on the side of buildings and sent a few anonymous letters,” she says, doubtful.

How can she not _see_ , how marvelous she is? How her heart is so big and so kind that she has—will—might—take off her mask and reveal her identity to a strange little boy in an alleyway, will take the time to teach him the way of things, about kindness and trust, about systems and injustice.

“You also stopped a crime. You saved my life. And…” He takes a step towards the computer.

“And I believe you’ll do so much more.”

He presses a button on the computer, and a picture of Spoiler, the original Spoiler, the Spoiler who saved his life, appears on the screen.

She stares up at it, her jaw slack. “That’s—that’s my costume!”

“And that’s not all,” he says, passing her the note.

It’s his most precious possession, second only to the batarang on most days, and even more than it on some. It’s a motto, a creed, a reminder through the dark days.

About the importance of kindness. Of hope.

That he’s not just here to inspire fear, but also to bring light to the darkness, courage to the innocent, and to save people.

Just like she saved him.

Maybe he could have survived that awful night.

But he knows, without a doubt, that Stephanie Brown, who had been a vigilante for three years, rather than two weeks at most, had saved his soul that one night.

She stares at the note for a long, long time.

“This is my handwriting.”

“I thought it might be.”

“That’s… that’s my _name_.”

“It is.”

“I—how?”

“I’m not sure. It could be dimensions, or it could be time travel or magic or a thousand other things. Our world is strange, Stephanie. I’ve always known this. But I admit, you caught me by surprise.”

“I—but I didn’t _do this_!” She says. “I didn’t write this note!”

“No.” He puts a hand on her shoulder. “But a version of you did. A version of you told me, a long time ago, that I could do a lot of good in this world by putting on a mask and helping people who couldn’t help themselves. She told me about putting on the mask to protect the people you care about, told me about how easy it is for people to fall between the cracks in systems.”

“I—” she says, staring down at the note in her hands.

“I became Batman, because of her. And you’re right, you’re not her. Maybe you’ll never be her. But no matter what, Stephanie Brown, I owe you everything… and you’ll always have my trust, and my faith.”

“But—what if I don’t deserve it?” She demands. “I just—what if I’d killed him?”

“But you didn’t,” he corrects. “Stephanie, dwelling on what you might have done, of paths you might have taken… what good will they do? You showed to me that, even if you’re not the young woman who helped me, that you’re kind. That you’re compassionate. That you care deeply and feel things strongly. That you love your mother more than anything. And you are, Stephanie Brown, a good person.”

“ _She’s_ a good person, maybe,” Steph says. “Are you saying that if she hadn’t saved your life, you’d still trust me?”

He pauses, honestly considering her question. “Maybe not,” he allows. “Maybe I have an advantage here. But in general… I believe in the lessons she taught me.”

“What lessons?” She crosses her arms, her chin making that same, familiar, stubborn line.

“That you should trust people,” he says.

He removes his cowl, and he sees her eyes go wide.

“Hello, Stephanie,” he says. “My name is Bruce Wayne.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you all enjoyed!
> 
> If you want to see more yelling about this universe, there's lots of it over on Tumblr, where I'm @[secretlystephaniebrown](http://secretlystephaniebrown.tumblr.com/).


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